Digital advertising and marketing: only the best ideas worldwide, since 2003

Minibar is the new on-demand alcohol service, described creatively as “the easiest way to lift your spirits.” There may be some truth to it. After signing up, users are prompted to enter their zipcode and their favorite drink, and to sit back and relax. In just under an hour, they can expect their delivery. This app is perfect for parties that run out of booze, whimsical drinking, or sudden and unexpected cravings. The only remaining question is: would such an easy access make us to drink more? (Probably.) To test this hypothesis, download you Minibar app here.

Welcome the world’s first Instagram cooking show. The fact that it’s on Instagram also makes it the world’s shortest cooking show, going on for just about 15 seconds. The name is “Fish Tales” and if you are into cooking fish with extremely speedy expert guidance, this is something for you. If you are a brand, this is something for you, too – I can easily imagine all the Krafts of the world jumping on the quick recipes trend.

Forget about the Groundhog Day. The “Is Winter F%^&* Over” site, created by Digiday, tells you everything you need to know about the change of seasons – all in words of Twitter. The site crawls Twitter looking for disgruntled comments about winter, and aggregates the sentiment into a simple answer. So far, Wednesday February 5th, got a consistent “No.”

This is such a wonderfully human idea, cooked up by two advertising people, and enabled by their agency, M&C Saatchi in Cape Town. It’s a pop-up store in the affluent neighborhood of Cape Town, called Greenpoint, and it’s a pop-up store for the homeless. The human psychology insight here is that people are willing to donate more clothes and more often, if they don’t have to go through the hoops of dropping the bags off, scheduling the pickup times, and the like. Best is just to let them drop it in front of their own door. Which is roughly what the “Street Store” does. Clothes are neatly displayed, making them easy to browse through, so homeless persons can pick and choose the items they like. All the print materials, that both housed the clothes and announced the shop, were made re-printable, so anyone who wants to replicate the idea under the same brand can do it. Great idea.

Grey London came up with a seamlessly executed “Icons” ad spot for Sunday Times. The main idea behind the spot was, however, not to celebrate the icons, but to show that all icons – real or imagined – are carefully constructed, by media, by culture and by us. Have a look, it’s quite a pleasure to watch.

It has become an annual tradition for Communication Planning’s superstar, Julian Cole, to pick top individuals in his field and to mix his notorious “Top” list together. Last year, it was Top 10 Digital Strategists to Watch, and 2014 is the year for the World’s Top 50 Planners to shine. As always, Julian assembled quite a diverse, global and impressive company. If you want to know who the movers and shakers in your industry are, definitely check this list out.